Jamie (Part Four)

Recap: Jamie’s mom hated fat people. I come from a fat people. Jamie’s mom hated me. Jamie had mommy issues.

Okay, are we all up to speed? Good.

Jamie’s older sister, who also attended our college, was a total ho-bag. Her name was Karen. Karen had herpes. It was a well-known fact on campus. When anyone would say Karen’s name, the eventual qualifier would be, “Karen? You mean Nasty Karen?”

Yep. That’s the one. Nasty Karen.

Nasty Karen never had any problem finding a boyfriend. We’re pretty sure she just hung out around the county jail waiting for guys to be released. Seriously, most of her boyfriends had prior convictions. I suppose if I spent enough time in jail, I may want to stick my junk inside Nasty Karen, too. Jail time does weird things to people.

When Karen found out that Jamie and I were dating, she was pissed. When she found out that Jamie said she loved me — and that I said I loved her back — she was more than pissed. She was reality show mad.

What do I mean by reality show mad? I mean the kind of ridiculous anger that involves things like yelling, screaming, various misdemeanors, and threats of bodily harm. You know, TV gold.

The problem, though, was that this wasn’t TV. This was real life. And it was coming from Nasty Karen, whose most recent boyfriend just got out of jail for assault.

Yes, she really did threaten me. Well, I should say she threatened to have her big, bad, fresh-out-of-jail boyfriend come after me and “kick my shit.” Her words, not mine.

Have I mentioned that I was an RA at my college? If not, I was an RA at my college. I lived in a dorm and was responsible for stupid shit like making sure the doors were locked, and telling people to be quiet after midnight.

As an RA, I had become pretty friendly with the campus police. They would stop by my room on occasion to make sure everything was going well on my floor. Now, these weren’t intimidation tactics by any means. The police on our campus were genuinely concerned with the safety and well-being of the students. If a student was being self-destructive, they wanted to know so they could intervene before it reached a point at which an intervention involved ambulances or handcuffs or criminal charges.

Their intentions were good, and their usual approach was passive and friendly. However, they could scare the shit out of someone when they wanted to.

One of the officers — a guy in his 40s named Dave — stopped by one day and asked how things were going.

“Well,” I said, “this girl I’m dating has a sister who goes here who absolutely hates me, and she recently threatened physical harm.”

Luckily for me, the threat came via e-mail, so all I had to do was press print.

“Wait,” said Dave, “is this ‘Nasty Karen?’”

Yes, even the cops called her that. It was a small campus.

I confirmed for him that it was indeed Nasty Karen.

“I’ll go have a talk with her,” he said.

I never heard from Nasty Karen again… But I did begin getting e-mails from Karen and Jamie’s mom, telling me what a disgusting creature I was, and how big of a chicken I was because I called the cops on her daughter.

I replied, pointing out that I wasn’t afraid of her daughter, but that the ex-con she was fucking this week was really the source of my concern.

I also pointed out that the guy was black, which was sure to make mom even more angry than the fact that her daughter was dating someone with a criminal record to begin with. It was not my finest moment, but Jamie (and her sister, obviously) were the only non-racists in their family.

“By the way,” I added, “Your daughter has herpes, and just about everyone on campus knows her as ‘Nasty Karen.’”

She wrote more e-mails to me after that, but I just deleted them. I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with her. I did, however, have plenty of time and energy for Jamie, and we spent nearly every waking moment together until Thanksgiving break.

As I had mentioned earlier, I was an RA, and every RA had to stick around for at least one long weekend during the school year. That year, I ended up with Thanksgiving. I had to spend Turkey Day in my dorm room. It was mostly miserable, especially when Jamie called me on Saturday afternoon.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, “and I need you to promise you won’t get angry.”

Of course, that’s never a good sign, and I told her that no reasonable person could make that promise.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll just tell you then — I kind of slept with someone.”

That someone was her next-door neighbor, who was 17 and a senior in high school. Apparently they had gotten drunk and/or high on Thanksgiving night and ended up naked.

And then repeated that for most of Friday. She hadn’t just slept with someone. They had been fucking each other senseless for the better part of 36 hours before she finally took a break to call me and let me know.

I was mad. She said she loved me. And I let myself fall in love with her. And as soon as she was in another area code for more than a few hours, she cheated on me.

So after all that emotional turmoil, after the vitriol from her mother, the threats from her sister, and spending hours upon hours telling Jamie that there was nothing wrong with her, she took everything we had — which though dramatic, I thought it was pretty solid for a couple of dumb kids — and pissed it all away.

We tried to make up. I tried to forgive her, but I just couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried to glue those pieces back together, my heart was irreparably broken.

And to this day, that’s the most hurt I have ever been.